Michael Palascak / Special to the Register

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When Los Angeles comedian Kathleen Madigan claims to be an ordinary person, it’s not one of those things Hollywood people just say for show. When she answered the phone last week, she was in her sister’s minivan in Jefferson City, Mo., waiting to pick up her twin nieces from kindergarten.

But not every ordinary person — or Sally Lunchbox, as she calls herself — gets paid for telling jokes.

Over the last 25 years, Madigan has quietly be­come one of the country’s most popular comedi­ans. She has toured with the USO, occupied her own Hollywood Square, and per­formed on late night shows with Jay Leno (15 times), David Letterman (six) and Conan O’Brien (two). She is the only comedian to go unchallenged on NBC’s “Last Comic Standing,” which means nobody else claimed to be more funny. (YouTube has all kinds of clips to back that up.)

Still, she shrugs off talk of a role in a sitcom or hosting her own show like Kathy Griffin, the other funny Irish Kathy.

“Why would I work harder if I can work this hard and have a great time?” Madigan said. “I have a place to live. I can pay the bills. I’m good.”

Madigan hangs out a lot with comedian Lewis Black, who likes to rant about politics even when there’s nothing going on. When she was reminded that politics are always going on here in Iowa, she laughed.

“My sister just said, ‘They’re the smart farmers,’ ” she said in the minivan. “But it’s true. You’re smarter up there. When I was little, we used to take the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, and we all figured the people in Iowa were so smart that they got to design the tests. No wonder they did well.”

But politics aren’t really her bag.

“Lew will spend the time to explain stuff and then talk about it, and I just don’t even have that kind of energy,” she said.

She favors everyday stories about her family over Black’s punditry or Griffin’s celebrity gossip. So the only current events she talks about are the big ones, like the recent tech glitches in the government’s Obamacare website.

“Did you see those hearings? Everybody there was 60 years old. Everybody at those meetings should be 30 or younger,” she said. “I know two guys in Boulder who could fix this by Wednesday if you paid them with pot and pizza. You couldn’t have any meetings because they’re high all the time, but you give them a deadline and that website will work.”

Sally Lunchbox doesn’t pretend to know about that stuff, but she’s smarter than she lets on.

“She reads every book out there,” said her sister, Kate. (Their parents really liked the name.) “She has a double major in philosophy and journalism, but she can be on the couch, watching TV, and say the stupidest things that still sound funny. She really is funny all the time.”